Summary: How business coaches and consultants who work with freelancers, consultants, agencies and other types of service providers can help their clients create better outcomes faster when they help their clients apply proven principles of behavioral economics – the brain science behind why people buy or don’t buy – to pricing and sales strategy and stop treating the symptom of undercharging as a confidence or credibility problem.
If you help freelancers, fractional execs, consultants or any type of service provider or agency owner to grow their business, pricing is a topic that’s bound to come up.
Your clients probably ask you all kinds of pricing questions like:
How much should I charge?
How do I figure out the going market rate for my services?
Should I bill hourly or per project?
How do I know when it’s time to raise my rates?
How do I stop trading my time for money?
And if you’re like most business coaches or consultants I meet, you probably pass along the conventional advice we’ve all heard – and probably personally experienced and even followed ourselves on our own business growth journey:
“Find out the going market rate for your service, and start there – and as you build your confidence and your case studies, you can raise your prices as you go. Grow your skills. Build your brand. Establish your positioning. Collect testimonials. Build your thought leadership so you can prove your value and justify your prices and charge your worth.”
And it seems like logical, responsible advice on the surface…
…but it actually works against your clients and delays their results!
After over a decade of coaching brilliant, ambitious freelancers, consultants and creative and professional service providers (and after having left a corporate career myself to be my own boss) what I noticed is that we inadvertently take the same advice we were given about how to climb the corporate ladder and be successful in our careers and just automatically apply it to growing our businesses without even questioning it:
“Make sure you know the going market rate for your role, and over time as you gain experience and skills and references, you can add them to your resume so you can prove your value and justify a higher salary.”
But here’s what’s so, so important to know:
Pricing and selling services as a freelancer, consultant or professional service provider is a completely different scenario than growing your career and negotiating a salary as an employee.
And it requires a completely different strategy – one based on the actual science behind how our brains make purchase decisions, not on conventional wisdom on how to climb the corporate ladder.
The truth is that your clients are just one proposal away from the prices they really want to be charging right now.
(And they don’t have to spend months or even years building their credibility, perfecting their messaging or hustling to get more testimonials first).
Business coaches and consultants can help their clients create better outcomes faster when they help their clients apply proven principles of behavioral economics – the brain science behind why people buy or don’t buy – to pricing and sales strategy, and stop treating the symptom of undercharging as a confidence or credibility problem.
It’s time to unlearn everything you thought you knew about pricing so you can help your clients make more without working harder – and here are three shifts to get you started:
Help Your Clients Charge More Now (Without Waiting to Feel More Confident)
Your clients are experts in the services they provide, but they’re probably not experts in pricing and sales.
And every time they go to put a price on a proposal, they feel like a contestant on The Price Is Right, trying to guess the exact dollar amount their prospect will pay them without guessing too high and losing the sale.
They know what they really want to be charging…
…but then they get sticker shock when they see that number on their proposal.
And then they think, If I were just more confident, I wouldn’t feel like such a fraud about my pricing. If only I had a better reputation online, I could attract better clients with bigger budgets.
And from where you’re sitting, it does look like a confidence problem.
You see how talented this person is. You know they can charge more.
But they just can’t seem to get out of their own way.
But what if it wasn’t a confidence problem?
What if it was actually a strategy problem?
When your clients believe they have to get the price exactly right to close the sale, the pressure can feel enormous.
They’re trying to protect themselves from the possibility of rejection, losing the opportunity, or leaving money on the table.
And when people feel under pressure, they literally experience a physiological fear response that can make it harder to think clearly and make decisions that serve their longer-term interests.
For your clients, that fear response might look like:
- Lowering their price right before hitting send on a proposal.
- Asking AI or colleagues to tell them what they should charge instead of making a decision based on their own personal and business needs.
- Spending hours, even days, putting together the perfect proposal that will convince the client to say yes.
- Procrastinating on sending proposals because they’re already so overwhelmed with low-paying work they don’t really have the capacity to take on new clients.
- Agreeing to hourly billing, extra deliverables, or payment arrangements that don’t support the business they want to build.
But here’s what your clients need to hear:
They’re not selling themselves. Their clients aren’t buying them.
This isn’t a job interview. Their prospective client isn’t their future boss, and their proposal isn’t a resume.
There’s not one “magic price” that will make the right clients say yes.
And they don’t need to prove they’re worth the price.
Let me say that again.
They don’t need to prove they’re worth the price.
I know. It goes against the conventional wisdom we’ve all learned, but hear me out:
Their clients are buying the future time, money, capacity, peace of mind, or other outcomes they hope to gain by working with them.
Not deliverables. Not time. Not expertise. Not skills.
Outcomes.
It goes without saying that your clients must be able to do the work.
But the job of the sales and proposal process isn’t to convince their prospect that they’re worth the price, or that the deliverables are worth the price – it’s to show them that the value of the outcomes and results of working with them is worth many, many times more than the price.
And what your clients may not realize is that there are several processes happening in the human brain from consultation to close that affect how your clients and their prospects make pricing and buying decisions.
And when your clients are unaware of what’s actually going on, they can unknowingly do and say things that not only have them charging less than they could be, but also lower their chance of closing the sale.
For example:
- Your clients might unknowingly have messaging on their website that sets clients up to want to pay them less.
- They might be asking logical-sounding questions in their consultations that are setting their clients up for sticker shock later.
- They might be using a proposal strategy that closes at 30% on average when they could use one that closes at 70% on average.
- They might be saying things in a way that triggers their clients to have objections to working with them that they wouldn’t have had otherwise if they’d shared information in a different way.
That’s not a confidence problem. It’s a process problem.
But they send over a proposal, hear “Sorry, that’s out of our price range…” and then they blame that unwanted outcome on the wrong things – their price, their credibility, their expertise – when they don’t even realize they could have gotten a completely different response had they asked a few different questions on the consultation and used a different format in their proposal.
Which sends them back to trying to figure out a better marketing strategy to get better clients, get “better” at sales tactics, to hustling to convince their clients they’re worth the price, or keeping their prices unsustainably low because they don’t realize the no’s they’re getting aren’t about the price.
Maybe even leaving your program and finding another business coach to help them solve a problem that might not even be the actual problem!
The behavioral economics principles at play on both sides of the sales equation – your client’s offer and their prospect’s decision – are very powerful when put together correctly…
…and when put together incorrectly, they can work against your clients just as powerfully – keeping them hustling, undercharging, frustrated and stuck (and ultimately looking for another solution).
What if just by changing a few key things about their consultation, sales and proposal process – not their niche, brand, offers, messaging, thought leadership, etc. – your clients could close twice as many proposals at 3x higher prices on average – and see results on their very next proposal?
For example:
- Strategically using language on their websites that gets clients thinking about the value of future outcomes vs. the cost today.
- Asking questions during a consultation in a certain order to prevent sticker shock later.
- Using a proposal strategy that closes at 70% on average vs. the standard proposal strategy that has a 30% close rate on average.
- Sharing information in a specific way that doesn’t trigger primal fear responses (aka purchase objections).
When you combine your industry expertise with a pricing, proposal and sales process that’s built on the science of why people buy – your clients can close more proposals at higher prices without them having to change their niche, business model, offers, messaging, positioning or become a thought leader first.
Which leads me to shift #2:
Help Your Clients Understand What Makes Prospects Say Yes to Higher Prices
Decades of behavioral economics research on how the human brain evaluates choices, weighs uncertainty, and makes decisions about how to use their resources (time, money, capacity) shows that people often favor the status quo – their current situation – over making a change, even when their current situation isn’t ideal.
It’s called status quo bias, and we’ve all experienced this in one way or another: staying in jobs, relationships, or living situations that no longer feel aligned, but as the saying goes, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
Change introduces uncertainty, and our brains hate uncertainty. There’s a perceived risk of making the wrong choice, a cost to doing something different, and no guarantee that the outcome will be better than what they already know.
And when there’s money attached?
Another principle called loss aversion comes into play, making it even harder for people to move forward because people tend to feel the pain of a potential financial loss more intensely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
Think about what that means when your client’s prospective customer is considering their proposal:
On one hand, there’s the possibility of gaining something they want: more revenue, a stronger marketing strategy, time back in their day, or the capacity to grow their business.
On the other hand, there’s the resources they’ll have to part with, the risk that parting with those resources won’t pay off, and the possibility that they’ll be worse off for having made the change.
If you imagine the gain and the loss as two sides of a scale, the loss side carries twice as much psychological weight.
The gain has to be really compelling to overcome the potential loss.
Combine loss aversion with status quo bias, where the buyer’s brain is already hesitant to change, and the money they’re being asked to spend can make that change feel even riskier – and the stakes are even higher.
Your clients feel this (even if they can’t articulate it and don’t realize it) – and the way they typically handle it is to either lower their price or stuff the proposal full of extra deliverables to justify the price or make sure that their clients “get their money’s worth” – and either way your client loses.
They find themselves undercharging, overdelivering, overwhelmed, burnt out and wondering if it’s even possible to have the freedom, flexibility and financial independence they started their business for in the first place.
And the conventional advice when they find themselves in this situation is to hire – outsource or delegate the things someone else can do and keep only the things they can do, or figure out how to systematize and productize, remove themselves from the delivery and offer their services at scale…
But what if they could just charge 3x more for what they’re doing right now without having to change their niche, offers, or business model?
That’s what’s possible when your clients use a proposal and sales process that takes into account status quo bias, loss aversion and two other powerful principles of how human brains make decisions: framing and anchoring.
Which leads me to the third shift:
Help Your Clients Close More Projects At Higher Prices Without Sticker Shock
Your clients probably think that every time they send over a proposal, their prospect is making a decision on budget vs. price or deliverables vs. cost or some other binary, yes/no construct.
Which is only true because that’s the only decision they’ve ever been putting in front of them!!!
The traditional proposal process looks something like this:
Here are your goals, here’s the gap, here’s everything I’ll do for you to help you close the gap. Here’s why I’m the best at this, here’s what I’ve done for other clients like you, here’s why you can trust me. This is the length of the contract and this is the investment. Do you want to work together, yes or no?
And one of two things usually happens:
They say yes, and your client goes into hustle mode to live up to their proposal and make sure the client is happy and gets their money’s worth…
They tell them it’s out of their price range and they can’t afford it right now (maybe later), ghosts, or asks them if they can come down on the price – they think “See, I knew I couldn’t charge that much!”
And most sales “experts” would tell your client that they didn’t do enough to find out what their “objections” were so that they could overcome them, because when people tell you they can’t afford it, they don’t really mean it, there’s something else that’s making them hesitate and if you can find out what that thing is then you can convince them to change their mind and say yes.
Ew.
(No wonder basically every service provider I’ve ever met hates sales).
The solution is NOT to get better at uncovering and overcoming objections – it’s to put a different decision in front of the prospect – one that shifts the decision from budget vs. price to value vs. price, that doesn’t trigger status quo bias and loss aversion, and one that empowers prospects with brain-friendly choices that allows them to decide which they value more – their time or their money – and that sells the value of outcomes and results instead of time, skills, complexity or deliverables.
Here’s how to design a different decision:
Because of status quo bias, a single option, yes/no proposal actually nudges the brain towards no rather than yes.
But when you offer strategically framed choices instead of an ultimatum, our brains are more likely to make a choice rather than no choice.
And when those choices are mapped to the different ways people tend to value their resources (time, money, capacity) it’s even more powerful because there will probably be an option that resonates with what they most value (instead of there only being one option based on how you assume they like to use their resources, which might be totally wrong).
And instead of framing your proposal around what deliverables or how much time they’re getting for the price, you frame it around the long-term value of the outcomes and results to that specific client of reaching their goal or having their problem solved or achieving the outcomes they want.
And then before you ever talk about, list or discuss price, you anchor high in the value of the outcomes and results – not just money, but time, capacity, physical, emotional and mental health.
That’s how you design a different decision – not budget vs. price, but value vs. price where value is many, many times more than the price.
The anchoring principle of behavioral economics tells us that the first number a person sees becomes the anchor against which all other numbers are evaluated.
So when your clients talk about “starting at” prices, budgets or price ranges that go from low to high, they don’t realize that they are setting a low price anchor in their prospect’s brain – and then any number they discuss that is higher than that anchor creates the psychological experience of prices rising.
We only have to look at gas prices to see what most humans do when prices rise:
They experience a fear response, and they conserve what resources they have, even if they have more than enough resources. They wait. They hoard. They defer decisions.
But when prices lower, we feel relief. We take action, make decisions, move forward.
Anchoring low creates sticker shock.
Anchoring high creates relief, and bypasses sticker shock.
When your clients use a consultation, proposal and sales process designed to encourage prospects to make a decision vs. no decision, that decision is based on comparing value to price (where value is always many, many times more than the price), the proposal anchors high, and then value is placed on what outcomes and results are important to the client and not placed on the service provider, their time, skills or expertise…
…That’s a totally different decision the prospect is being asked to make – and it results in your clients closing more proposals at higher prices (without giving themselves or their clients sticker shock).
That’s the foundation of my Anchor High™ Methodology.
Prospects willing to pay your client higher prices are all around them right now – and your clients truly are just one proposal away from making the money they truly want to be making when they strategically use principles of behavioral economics in their sales and proposal process.
But Will These Pricing Strategies Work For My Clients?
You might be wondering whether these pricing strategies would work for your clients.
Maybe you serve lots of different types of service providers, like my client Lee who runs a consultancy that helps many different types of businesses with growth strategy – from helping influencers negotiate profitable, sustainable brand deals to helping financial services clients break into new markets.
Or maybe you serve a single type of service provider, like my client Meredith who helps corporate accountants make the move to fractional CFO.
Or maybe your program helps all types of service providers with different aspects of their business, like branding, messaging, positioning, marketing and lead generation.
Whether your clients provide financial expertise, manage someone else’s operations, design websites, lead marketing strategy, or offer specialized professional advice, they’re all facing a similar challenge:
How to price, package, present, and sell their expertise in a way that works with how people make purchasing decisions – while building a business that gives them freedom, flexibility and financial independence.
Your clients need to know how to strategically communicate the true value of their work without relying on a list of tasks and deliverables or testimonials or case studies or thought leadership.
They need a way to structure their proposals in a way that works with, not against, how human brains make decisions about their resources.
And they need to understand how their own assumptions about money (and their assumptions about how buyers think about money) can influence the prices they set, the offers they make, and the decisions they make throughout the sales process.
The specifics will look different for a fractional CMO than they will for a bookkeeper, a virtual assistant, or a lawyer – and that’s where your expertise comes in.
But the underlying pricing and sales principles of the Anchor High™ Methodology can be applied across service-based businesses (and are especially effective for selling at 4 and 5-figure price points).
That’s what makes the Anchor High™ approach such a valuable addition to a business coaching program that serves service providers across different industries.
You don’t have to replace your existing curriculum or become an expert in every service your clients provide.
You can bring a proven, science-backed pricing and sales methodology into the work you’re already doing, complementing your expertise with a framework that helps your clients turn what they’re already doing with you into more profitable, sustainable businesses.
Ready To Explore Adding a Proven Pricing Methodology to Your Coaching Program?
What if your clients didn’t need to get more confident before they could charge more?
What if they just needed a different way to price and sell the services they’re already delivering?
What if you could confidently help your clients approach their next proposal with a clear pricing strategy that doesn’t give them or their client sticker shock.
What if you could help them price their offers based around the outcomes their clients want, charge more than they ever thought possible, make offers based on strategy rather than emotion, and build businesses that don’t require them to constantly work more to earn more.
That’s the opportunity I’m inviting you to consider.
Through my Anchor High™ Certification Program, I help coaches and program leaders integrate advanced, science-backed pricing strategies and frameworks into their existing business coaching programs for service providers.
You bring the industry expertise and the clients you already serve. I bring the pricing and sales methodology designed to help those clients approach their businesses differently.
I’d love to help you explore whether Anchor High™ could be the missing piece for your clients.
Fill out this quick form to tell me more about your business and request a zero-pressure info call.
We’ll talk about what it could look like for you to learn the Anchor High™ Methodology and integrate the proven pricing strategies and frameworks into your coaching program to complement the incredible work you’re already doing to help your clients succeed.
Request an information call with me here!
I can’t wait to meet you!
